


Some Strong, Rare Spirit

by nogoaway



Series: in the enraptured adoration [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Car Sex, D/s Hints, M/M, S1 spoilers, kafka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 02:17:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5610169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nogoaway/pseuds/nogoaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5558207">In a Parallel Fashion</a>. Follows S1E11 to S1E18, so spoilers for all those episodes.</p><p>Finch's fingers graze John's throat as Finch straightens his tie. They skitter over his chest to align the fold in John's pocket square. Finch built a god with those hands, and he is not just a man. Surely it takes a god, to build one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Strong, Rare Spirit

_Be honest_ , _Finch_ , John says, as they head down the street with their respective limps, Trask's pistol solidly and safely in hand, _There is no machine, is there? It's just you._

He says it lightly, teasingly, the way he can say things to Finch that are too true to say seriously. To say such things in seriousness would open them to attack.

 _Couldn't have done it without you, Finch_ , he says, and means 'I've done as you asked'. _Thanks for the concern, Finch_. 'Please guide me'. _Be careful_. 'Stay with me'. _You'll think of something, Finch_. 'You always do'.

John hides his solemn oaths in teasing, and Harold Finch has no recourse but to roll his eyes.

 _Very manipulative_ , he says of Finch once, knowing the man is listening. _Secretive_ , and means 'powerful, an architect, something I cannot fully see or know but that sees me, knows me, fully'.

 _It's just you_ , he says, and means it, because Finch is something of a god, _good with computers_ , always watching and knowing and inspecting the world from his perch, an eye on high. A reluctant god, but a god nonetheless. Somehow bigger than the world.

John sits at his right, and Harold Finch never says _this is right_ , Harold Finch never says _your country needs you_.  He says only, 'this is the best we can do. Someone has to.'

Sometimes, he says 'I was wrong'. Sometimes, John finds Harold Finch at his desk in the library late at night, his glasses off, his head in his hands. The wall behind him is a patchwork memorial of numbers and red string that casts shadows like iron bars over the faces of his dead. Harold Finch does not let himself forget their faces.

A reluctant god, and John is his right hand, more than willingly. Devotedly. With worship.

* * *

 

On a Wednesday in September, John watches Harold Finch through the tall windows of a high-rise loft, talking to a young man with red hair and a fresh, handsome face. Finch smiles at him. Finch smiles at the man-- _the boy_ , John thinks, with a viciousness that startles him-- as if he cannot help smiling, as if he cannot look away.

John snaps pictures from the street, helpless in the face of it. Finch and the man are going through cardboard boxes together, sorting photographs and books and kitchenware, domestic detritus. John doesn't think they are Finch's things, but he holds a framed photograph as if it is precious. He smiles at the boy as if _he_ is precious. John reads his lips through the afternoon glare on the windows: _You always were an excellent student._

This is what Finch does, John reminds himself. He fixes people, molds them from dust. Was this boy nothing, like John was? Did Finch find him, too?

But the red-haired boy stands too close to Finch for that; he leans into Finch, touches him with eyes and hands, and Finch has never smiled at John like that. Never smiled at him just because he was John.

John has never considered Harold Finch's desires, preferences, if indeed Finch has any. He considers them now. Does Finch sleep with men, with boys twenty years his junior? Does Finch love men? John can't conceive of another reason for that smile. It is not deceptive. Harold Finch does not smile, not even for a cover. Happiness is not a mask he knows how to wear. The world weighs too heavily on Harold Finch for him to hold it to his face.

The boy hugs Finch. They do not kiss. Finch stands stiffly in his arms, and then he leaves.

John puts Fusco on it, but finds he cannot wait for his asset to get results. He goes through Carter, and acquires the deed to the loft. William Ingram is the only surviving family member of Nathan Ingram, former CEO of IFT.

John spends too many hours swiping through photographs of the both of them, father and son. The resemblance is undeniable. Nathan Ingram was an MIT alumnus, and Harold Finch is good with computers.

 _There are some things I just can't tell you_ , Finch says, and

 _I understand completely_ , John says.

He means it. He does understand.

He still tries Finch's password every morning, three times before the system locks him out. Finch must know, but he never says anything.

* * *

 

John Reese meets a boy who knows Sun Tzu. A boy with killer instinct, who _sees_ him.

 _I figured you out_ , Darren McGrady says, kicking his feet under the booth table as boys do, no matter how hardened. _You're a Ronin. Technically, you should have killed yourself, but now you wander the earth righting wrongs._

The boy asks for his name, and John gives it to him. One animal to another.

Together, they prowl the dark city. Finch's disapproval is like a pall over John, smothering, and for the first time he almost resents it. But of course Finch is right, in the end.

Finch is almost always right, in the end.

 _Don't worry, man_ , Darren tells him, with all the wisdom and authority of youth, _Someday you'll find a home, too_.

John Reese is not worried. He carries home with him in his ear, his home is all the city. Everything and everyone that Harold Finch sees and watches from his perch, John Reese guards with his life.

Then John goes to play Reservoir Dogs with a smuggler named Vargas, and they cut his link to Finch. For the first time in months, John walks in the dark. He calculates risk without Finch to lead him, and he lets the driver bleed out. The silence gnaws at him. He feels himself slipping, dissolving. He bares his teeth at the memory.

The interrogation is crude and easy enough to deal with, simple blunt pain. But he's here for Cahill. His orders are for Cahill. And to protect Cahill, to protect _Daniel Tully_ , he has to save the man's cover.

To this end, he lets them beat him. Too hard, as it turns out. He loses consciousness. It's blind luck that saves him, blind luck and smoke that coughs him awake in the trunk of a flaming car just in time to kick his way out.

Finch doesn't know, of course. John goes slogging through the woods to rescue Lionel Fusco, and heads back to his hotel to nurse his wounds in private. But he finds out. Finch _always_ finds out.

"I'm inclined to order you to the library immediately," Finch snaps, when John is slathering burn cream along the back of his hands and taps the speakerphone on his cell. "But seeing as it's past midnight and you are seriously wounded--"

"I'm fine, Finch," John says, and means it. He's fine. The voice is back in his ear. He's home. The rest-- the bones, the skin-- will heal.

"See me first thing in the morning. Take a cab." Finch hangs up on him, and John listens to the vacant hum of the speakerphone for many, many minutes, not really expecting Finch to reappear, but needing him to. He falls asleep on his back, stomach bruising darkly, still needing.

As a rule, John dislikes cabs. He takes one anyway.

"In the future, Mr. Reese," Finch says, face drawn and mouth pinched, "Re-establishing contact with me should be your first priority in any situation like that one."

John doesn't look up from his croissant, dry and too sweet from the mediocre cafe just around the corner, instead of the bistro he normally stops at. "Cahill," he says. It's not an argument. Just a double-check, that orders are changing. Finch had told him Cahill. Without Finch in his ear, he'd clung to Cahill, and gone down with the ship. A good soldier to the end, the one Finch had hired.

Finch doesn't bite, utterly implacable. "Do you understand me? It will be your _first_ priority."

He understands. John Reese is no samurai, but he has a master.

"You are not disposable," Finch tells him, and John hears _you are still useful to me_.

It soothes and satisfies him inside and out, and if it weren't for John's swollen knees and the certainty that it would be unwelcome, he would kneel at Harold Finch's feet.

* * *

  
John has to go to Wall Street, and Harold Finch puts him in yet another suit.

It's distracting, to see Finch without his usual layers, just shirt and waistcoat with measuring tape draped over his neck. To see Finch doing manual work. He looks like a different person, some kind of horribly embodied not-Finch, the pale incarnate phantom of the voice of god in John's ear. There's something deeply amiss about it, and when Finch crouches down to fix the fall of John's pants cuff John shivers whole-body at the wrongness of it. The world is flipped, inverted. Finch has always been shorter than John, but John has never looked _down_ at him before. Even when Finch is seated at his desk, John is looking up at him, dragged up from the ground where he slithers like a shoestring, daring to approach magnetic north.

If Finch tries to shine his shoes, he'll have a coronary.

Harold Finch is not just a man. And yet he is. A man with thin arms and long fingers soft and tapered like a woman's, cuticles whole and even. A man who bends down easily but unfolds himself stiffly, like a stuck joint. A man with bald spots, and a smudge on his glasses, and hands that whip measuring tape up and around John's legs so quick and practiced John can't tell whether to be alarmed at the idea of Harold Finch learning a trade, or simply impressed by his ruthless competence.

Finch's fingers graze John's throat as Finch straightens his tie. They skitter over his chest to align the fold in John's pocket square. Finch built a god with those hands, and he is not just a man. Surely it takes a god, to build one.

John is taken abruptly and totally by the urge to kiss Harold Finch's palm, and his head moves a few centimeters of its own accord before John regains control of his faculties. It's a tiny motion, barely a twitch.

"Be still, Mr. Reese," Finch snaps, and John stills, holding his breath, relieved simply by the opportunity to obey.

* * *

 

John Reese does not have to sleep with Adam Saunders. There are other ways to go about information-gathering, other ways to stick close until they figure out what kind of threat Saunders is facing.

He does it because it's the most efficient way. And, admittedly, he does it because Adam Saunders is young, and fresh-faced, and smart, much like the red-haired William Ingram who put his hands on Finch in a high-rise loft in Midtown. He's intrigued by the symmetry of the thing. And though it's irrational, he feels like he might learn something about Finch in doing it. Be closer to him, somehow. To the 'just human-ness' of Harold Finch.

So he lets Adam Saunders take him to another slick, painfully hip bar in Chelsea, and he lets Adam Saunders buy him a drink, which John pretends to consume. He lets Adam Saunders call him out on it, and they spar back and forth over the importance of keeping one's wits about, when everyone has an angle.

"What's your angle, Adam?" John purrs, and Adam Saunders reaches out one slim boyish hand to undo the top button of John's dress shirt. His fingers are cold.

"Suits you better," he says, and slams back the dregs of his club soda. "Wanna get out of here?"

They get out of there.

"We're in the open," John says, and they are, but it's less the dim side street off 11th he means and more the traffic and security cameras. John can see two from his vantage point, stretched out in the back seat of Saunders' obnoxiously fast black Lexus. The earpiece is still in, too, but Harold Finch has read his docket. He knows the extent of John Reese's HUMINT skill set. If Finch doesn't want to listen in, he can mute John's end.

John knows he won't, though, just as surely as he feels the cold, impersonal eye of the traffic cam on him through the windshield. And despite himself, John shudders under the blank certainty of Finch's gaze.

"You know me, Rooney," Saunders says, stone cold sober and dry as bone "I like the rush." His eyes are fever bright in the dark, skin washed red and blue in the glow from the dashboard and radio. He looks less young, like this.

"Do you like older men, Adam?" John wonders, and reaches down to undo their belts. He leaves his own in the loops, unbuckled, but yanks Adam's all the way out, letting it slither into the foot-well.

The earwig is silent. John imagines that he can hear Finch's breathing, slow and even and disinterested. Watching them tumble in the dark like Finch would watch code compile, or facial recognition software skim security footage. Something useful to his humble project, and nothing more.

"Not as a rule." Saunders deftly undoes his own zip and shimmies his slacks down one-handed, leaving John to manage his button fly (courtesy of Finch's custom job). "But I think you and I have a lot in common."

"Is that so." John lets the smirk come, unfurl over his face. As if this soft little boy has any idea the things John has done, the places he's been. The things he's willing to do.

To Saunders' credit, he doesn't try to undo John's shirt any further. The scars would be a bitch for John Rooney, Asset Manager, to explain. Instead Saunders pulls John out through his boxers and jerks him the same perfunctory way he slammed the stick shift around not three minutes ago.

Finch wouldn't put up with that from a younger lover, John guesses, and the thought spools out like he's opened a dam, what Finch would put up with, what Finch would want, specifically. To be on top, for one. 'Harold Finch' is as close to a synonym of 'Control Freak' as John has ever encountered.

Saunders laughs breathlessly when John rolls them, and it slides into a gasp when John gets both his wrists in one hand and yanks his arms up above his head, slamming them into the door.

"How's that rush treating you?" John asks, and grinds down onto him, smirking. He's fully hard already, and not from Saunders' hand and flirtations, although those hadn't hurt. Finch probably had limited options when it came to this, given his hip and spine. Finch was also-- not fond of a mess. Fastidious.

John comes down Adam Saunders' throat in minutes, his palms braced on the fogging door window, Saunders' hands creeping over John's back pockets, squeezing his ass. He doesn't return the favor, just grabs Saunders' pocket square from his suit while he's still gasping for air, shakes it out, and handles him roughly until Saunders spills into the silk.

"Holy shit," Saunders rasps.

John unpeels his other hand from the chill of the window, leaving a matching print. He buttons himself back up, still straddling Saunders' knees.

"Hey, Rooney."

John glances down at him, feeling oddly unsatisfied. He's on edge, and doesn't know why.

"You ever go to Chelsea Piers?" Saunders rolls his neck. "The driving range?"

John's first impulse is to lie and say he doesn't know how to play golf. But apparently this is the weird trading floor version of pillow talk, and he has a job to do. Should have guessed Saunders wouldn't be forthcoming in the backseat of a sports car, no matter how young he is. Saunders is his own kind of undercover. The mask never comes off entirely.

"Sure," John says. "I'll hit a few buckets."

John presses too hard, too soon at the driving range, which is just as well, because on the ride back to Baylor Zinn someone funnels them into a construction zone and only John's freakishly well-adapted instincts keep Saunders from meeting his grisly end via an oncoming backhoe. As breakups go, it's one of his easiest. The next time Saunders sees him on the trading floor, their earlier chemistry is completely absent.

He stashes Saunders at the warehouse encampment in Port Morris for the same reason, because it's the most efficient. And because he wanted an opportunity to see Joan. And maybe, if he's being brutally honest, to prove a point. Saunders isn't the only suit sleeping rough at Port Morris. Not even close.

 _Who's looking after you these days_ , Joan asks him, her hands full of spent casings she'll hawk as scrap brass. John can tell she doesn't expect an answer. He's always been closed-mouthed with her, both for her safety and because he had very little to say, last year, other than 'pour me another'.

He gives her one, anyway. _Someone new._

In his ear, he hears Finch exhale, just a bit too loudly. He hadn't expected an answer either, apparently, and it makes John wonder whether he went wrong, with Saunders. Doesn't Finch know that John is completely at his disposal? Doesn't Finch know that John is _his_?

"I'm glad you managed to impress on young Mr. Saunders the importance of community service," Finch says, when John returns to the library.

"I impressed several things on him," John says, before he can stop himself.

But Finch doesn't bite. The only indication he gives that he heard or understood at all is a slight jerk of his head towards John's armchair, and then he's back to typing at the same frightening pace as usual.

John doesn't bring it up again, and neither does Finch.

* * *

 

"You know," Finch breathes, gazing up at the library's coffered ceiling as John guides him slowly up the stairs and through the stacks towards the sofa. "I first read Kafka in high school. _In the Penal Colony_." He shudders. "I couldn't get through it. I didn't understand. I thought it was shock fiction, simply nauseating for its own sake."

"You don't want to tell me this," John warns him, and catches Finch's elbow when he stumbles.

"I can't imagine why not." Finch just keeps hobbling forwards, like he hasn't even noticed. More evidence that the E is far from out of his system. Walking around all day tailing Jordan Hester will have been hell on his leg, John knows, but Finch isn't feeling any pain. "We've talked about him many times, poor Franz. _Der Strafkolonie_ \-- it's about a machine, you know."

John doesn't know. He makes a mental note to find out as soon as possible.

"A terrible, terrible machine," Finch continues, and lets John ease him down onto the couch. "That metes out justice and punishment, that finds us all guilty--"

"Please drink those." John indicates the bottled water, needing to leave as desperately as he wants to stay. Finch doesn't talk with John about literature, about high school ( _Finch went to high school_ , John thinks, _Finch was a teenager._ ). He doesn't talk with John about anything of consequence, if he can help it.

But of course, Harold Finch can't help anything, at the moment. And it's worse than him being on his knees, fussing with John's cuffs. It's obscene.

John drops to his own knees, and slips off Harold Finch's shoes. It's an act he's wanted deeply to perform, but not like this. This is all wrong. This is not Harold Finch the man, the more-than-a-man. This is something John has not been granted permission to see. That no one should see.

If Harold Finch remembers this in the morning, John is absolutely certain that he will be cut loose. Finch, divine watchmaker, will vanish and leave his hard-won creation to work alone. And John will tick until he can't anymore, because Finch has wound him up.

And it won't be enough. The Oxfords are warm in his hands. John sets them next to the sofa, paired and even.

"I'm afraid you were the Commandant to my Officer," Finch whispers, and it's low and terrible, nothing like the giddy trip he was having when Fusco dropped him off. John looks up at him from the floor, sees a tight mouth and the full extent of Harold Finch's night-time 'I was wrong' horror, the expression he usually hides in his hands. "Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps you threw yourself on its mercy, for my sake."

John forces himself to drape the blanket over Finch's shoulders and step away from the sofa.

Harold Finch stares at him, unseeing. "But we're all the Condemned, aren't we? We built it, and it's _judged_ us."

"Finch," John says, helplessly. "Finch, please go to sleep."

Finch blinks, jolts a little in place, like he's just woken up. "Oh, are you leaving so soon? Don't you want to stay and talk?"

"Actually, I'm pretty tired."

"Oh." Finch's face softens, and he gazes up at John with that Midtown high-rise smile, genuine and incongruously sober. "Don't let me keep you, then. Goodnight, Nathan."

Oh.

"Goodnight, Harold," John says, and catches the hardback before it falls to the floor, slipping from Finch's slack fingers. His sole thought is, _oh._ Nathan Ingram. _Oh_.

John goes to sit on the stairs and pages through Kafka until the sun rises, sheeting in bright dusty blades from the windows. It tells him nothing more about Harold Finch the man than sleeping with Adam Saunders did, because Finch is wrong-- the story is not about the machine. It's about the people who use it.

And precisely because Harold Finch worries, Harold Finch has nothing to worry about.

At 0620, John hears Finch stirring on the floor above, and he tugs the collar up on his coat, striding out onto the street. Takahachi Bakery will open soon, and they stock Finch's particular brand of tea, the brand that makes his mouth quirk up a little, when he smells it, with guarded joy and genuine surprise.

It's as close to that open smile as John Reese is going to get from Harold Finch, and it's enough.  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Oh, if you marveled at some mighty spirit  
> with a fit frame to execute his will--  
> even unconsciously to work his will--  
> you should be moved no less beside some strong,  
> rare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body.  
> \--Robert Browning, _Paracelcus_
> 
> *The Kafka book Harold is holding in identity Crisis is actually a copy of _The Trial_ , but I couldn't resist going for the more obvious choice.


End file.
